National Dialogue

Today, CCAs for MA5, PU1 and PU2 students were cancelled and replaced with a 'National Dialogue'. I had no idea what it was about but soon learnt that the thing was to do with student motivation, mostly.

Though it was kinda boring to sit there in the audi while most of our friends were either having their field performance practices (dorang Kahar, Zudin, Das and Khaliq) or escaping the function (macam si Sim and dorang si Waqi), the talk was quite interesting as well. The Director of Jabatan Penerangan told us about why Brunei is so special and what characteristics and features we students should have instilled in ourselves.

Although I had to disagree when the Director mentioned that one of the reasons we should be proud of being Bruneians (something like that) was our considerably HIGH yearly income per capita, which if I'm not mistaken is $47,000.00 (per head per year). But obviously, in many countries including Brunei, income is never equally distributed; BIG difference between how much 'the rich' gains and how much 'the poor' gets. Plus, how much of the national income (GDP) generated (mainly by our oil and gas production) do we 'citizens' actually get? I mean, look at how much the Royal lines are getting.

And I was also discussing with Bahri about whether the income generated through Shell Co. in Brunei is still broken even (50/50) between Shell and the government; where that 50% of the government is then broken down again to 50% for the government and 50% for the Royal people. I'm not sure if this whole paragraph is correct but that was what I used to hear.

If the things I've mentioned above were never taken into account then really, what's the true/the REAL income per capita of us Bruneians then?


Anyway, the crowd in the audi was annoying. Balik-balik bising I kept shh-ing but nada effect. I know it's helpless and you're bound to talk to your friend sitting next to you, same goes for me too, tapi pandai-pandai lah control volume mulut atu lol. And jangan rude to the guest wah! Kalau the guest balum abis cakap or balum abis speechnya, JANGAN DULU CLAP! Twice lagi tu the crowd did that; some even continued on clapping while the guest continued his last part of his talk, as in yang samseng-samseng they did that on purpose.